


what have we ever had, but ruin?

by ncfan



Series: Legendarium Ladies April [37]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspection, Ocean, POV Female Character, Tumblr: legendariumladiesapril, legendarium ladies april
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Elwing had stayed, stayed, stayed, until there was no more land to stand on, and she must sprout wings and go. She was not prepared to once again be the one who stayed.
Relationships: Eärendil/Elwing (Tolkien)
Series: Legendarium Ladies April [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/244393
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: Legendarium Ladies April 2020





	what have we ever had, but ruin?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the April 11, 2020 [poetry prompt](https://ncfan-1.tumblr.com/post/615140486257295360/legendarium-ladies-april-prompts-for-april-11), Tigers. The full text of the poem is in the end note.

_What have we ever had, but ruin?_

Not the sort of question that Eärendil would have answered the way Elwing wished him to. No, of course he would not have. He had memories of something other than a refugee camp cowering in reeds that towered over the roofs of rude little houses, memories of something other than a faint inkling of fire and smoke against the black satin and glittering star-jewels of a winter night. Eärendil had been born to, Elwing was _not_ too proud to admit, as Doriath had fallen when she was little more than a babe in arms and it had not been living up to the reputation it claimed to for decades, maybe centuries, really, before that… _Anyways_ , Eärendil had been born to what had been the most glorious kingdom in Ennor, and until the moment of its downfall, he had known nothing of privation or loss or even fear. Gondolin had gone untouched by war or famine or strife for so long; those who had lived behind its walls since it was first built and never strayed until the Enemy found them there may well have forgotten what those things were even like.

(She thought about Thingol, sometimes, sitting securely in his throne as all the land outside of Doriath’s borders burned and withered. Elwing thought of her great-grandfather claiming dominion over all of Beleriand, while all the while he abdicated all responsibility to the people living outside of Doriath’s borders. Queen of the Iathrim, she was called, but she had never claimed to be queen over lands where she had no true authority and which she had no real ability to _protect_.

There were no lands anywhere that Elwing could protect, so she was queen of a people, and not of a place. There were no _people_ whom she could protect, but her people called her their queen anyways, and thus, so it was. They would have no one else. Well, once. Now that she had left them, perhaps they had been willing to settle for someone else. She hoped so. She’d never been much of a queen, anyways.)

If Elwing ever asked Eärendil that question, no doubt he would tell her of Gondolin in its beauty, before it was burning and his parents were carrying him away through the tunnel Lady Idril had been wise and far-sighted enough to see a need for. She knew he would have. He had regaled her with such tales often enough, when the nights had been dark and not quiet, and they had lied awake in their low, rickety bed in their house in the Lisgardh. Years ago that had been, and yet she could remember it so well—no surprise, perhaps, for Elwing never forgot any taste she ever had of fear, no matter how may tastes she had had.

So yes, she remembered. They had had so many nights like that, lying awake in a bed that should have been colored with the shadows of night, and yet instead were tinted scarlet and amber and gold with livid tongues of fire that reached up into the northern sky, obliterating any sight they might have hoped to have of the stars.

They could not flee. Eärendil did not wish to stay—even then, in those early days and nights, he had already yearned to sail west to find the Undying Lands, find the Rodyn, and convince them to _help_ , as if they wouldn’t have begun to help already if they had any desire to do so. His heart was in the Sea, and it was calling to him with each lapping wave to come and take it back. Elwing would not go—poor excuse for a queen, she was, and yet her duty bent her will towards the Lisgardh, towards this camp which housed her people. She bore with her a treasure that could perhaps guarantee them some measure of safety, if she proved to have the power to use it.

Eärendil did not wish to stay, and Elwing would not go. So they lied there in the night, darkness cut to ribbons by fire, too taut to sleep and too weary to rise from their beds. They lied there in the night, prone and trembling, feeling as if naked in the terrible gaze of their enemy. Their limbs were locked at their sides, and they could not seek out each other’s arms, but Eärendil’s hand found hers, and squeezed, and he began to whisper of his home, of his parents who had sailed into the West and left them here, of his grandfather and of the lords who had died, of silver fountains and trees of silver and gold, of mellyrn and green fields and Anor rising over the snow-capped peaks of the mountains, crowned with mist and shadowed by Eagles. He spoke of everything he could think of that would banish the darkness and banish the fire, the words flowing from his tongue like water.

Elwing could find nothing to say in turn. She thought of eggs with stony shells that when cracked would ooze blood instead of yolk. She thought of her father, shining. She thought of her father, dead. She squeezed his hand in turn, and her fingers felt so small wound in his, but she realized that she could feel his hand shaking, and she rubbed her thumb across his knuckles, and the fires seemed a little less, but come the next night, the fires would come again, and nothing they ever did could extinguish them entirely.

In the ship, on the Sea, there had been little talk of Gondolin, but Elwing knew that he had thought of it. Their minds might not touch, but their thoughts were rarely secret from one another. She could look at his face, and know.

He had been thinking of it then. Staring into the cleft of these strange mountains, and the towers that rose from the mists, Elwing knew he must be thinking of Gondolin. Even _she_ was thinking of Gondolin.

“Don’t follow me.”

He had not said that the first time he took to the Sea. Then, Elwing thought he had rather hoped she _would_ follow him, hoped that she would wade out into the shallows and scream for Vingilot to return and toss down a rope for her for she could sail away with them. Oh, he knew her, but he did not know her quite as well as he seemed to think. Elwing stayed, stayed, stayed, for these were her people and she was not the equal of those who came before her, but she could stay, she could wield her birthright and try to give a little light and solace to their meager living clinging to the edge of the Sea.

Eärendil had gone, gone, gone, and Elwing had stayed, stayed, stayed. They had found the time for their two boys, but scant time it had been for a man who was always taking to the Sea, always looking for the heart that had been given to the brine long ago, the very moment he had first laid eyes upon the searing blue and the shimmering haze where water and sky did meet and kiss. (Elwing had never been _happy_ to share him, not exactly, but she had never asked him how he felt to share her with the bloodied shadows of her dead brothers and her dead parents and the brilliant, obliterating light of the Silmaril of Lúthien. In days such as these, nothing could ever be wholly theirs. Nothing.)

Elwing had stayed, and stayed, and stayed, until the ground which had always been shifting beneath her feet had fallen away completely and she had chosen the Sea over the sword, until Melian’s blood spoke to her for the first time in memory and, at last, she was going, going, gone.

The way back was shut. All she would find there were the bloodied shadows of her dead sons.

“Don’t follow me.”

He spoke in concern for her life. The Rodyn had laid their prohibition down, and all those who sought their shores went seeking death. Even one who bore a Silmaril could have no guarantee of mercy, and there was not one for the both of them—only Eärendil could go onto the forbidden shares wearing the prize the Rodyn so craved.

Before Elwing’s eyes was a land beautiful and poisonous. If they did not die, if they were not struck down for their presumption, she thought still that such a land must ruin them for all others, must ruin their hearts for any other love they had ever held inside. Her love had always felt to her a cringing, fearful thing, but she would yet hold onto it, if she could.

At Elwing’s back was the Sea.

“Don’t follow me.”

But what had she ever had, but ruin? It had not started with the demise of Menegroth, not started with dead parents and missing brothers cast out into the dark and the cold. The veins of ruin ran back further still. They ran to the choice of Lúthien, they ran to the first death of Beren, they ran to the poison dripping from Thingol’s lips as he made bitter jest that if this vagabond brought him a Silmaril, _then_ he could have the hand of his daughter. Those black and rotten veins tangled about the necks of every one of Elwing’s forebears. They delved into the soil beneath the feet of Thingol and Melian in Nan Elmoth, making barren the soil on which they stood as they stared at each other in wonder.

The seeds of ruin were planted long before any could guess what bitter fruits they would yield. But the fruits had sprouted, and withered, and burst, and they had spread their acrid flesh and numerous seeds across the land, and the ruin of Elwing’s line was the ruin of Beleriand.

Elwing had never had anything but ruin. She had pried love from it, and clasped it with fearful, cringing, jealous fingers. She had never been blessed with the promise of permanence. She had watched more than one house crumble and fall into the Sea, brick by brick.

She would not forsake love now.

Elwing sprang from the side of the ship, ignoring Eärendil’s spluttered, horrified protests. For a moment, she was in the water past her head, enveloped in cold, rushing currents. The water was not the water of a poisonous land, but then, she was not on dry land, yet.

Soon enough. Soon enough.

“Let us go together,” she told Eärendil, when she was treading water and her hair was fanning out behind her like the wings of the bird that she had been.

If she had known how to be that bird again, she would have sprouted wings and feathers and beak and talons at once, and never left his side, no matter what peril he met in this too-beautiful land. She was not a bird, and knew not how to become one. Perhaps she could learn, but for now, she had only herself. It was all she had ever had, really. The Silmaril had profited her little, in the end. Elwing had herself, but it was not as if she had lost anything in the process.

“I tire of cowering.” She reached out for his hand. “Let our fates be as one.” He took it, and their wet fingers wound together, and Eärendil’s hand shook, and she stroked his knuckles with her thumb.

She feared little what she might lose, now. They had ever lived with a sword balanced above their necks, ever ready to fall. Let them join their fates together, and go.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Tigers_ , by Eliza Griswold
> 
> What are we now but voices  
> who promise each other a life  
> neither one can deliver  
> not for lack of wanting  
> but wanting won’t make it so.  
> We cling to a vine  
> at the cliff’s edge.  
> There are tigers above  
> and below. Let us love  
> one another and let go.
> 
>  **Anor** —the Sindarin name for the Sun  
>  **Ennor** —Middle-Earth (Sindarin)  
>  **Iathrim** —the Sindar of Doriath  
>  **Lisgardh** —A marshy region by the Mouths of Sirion, a land of reeds that grow man-high and dense as a forest. Its name in earlier drafts was ‘Arlisgion,’ translated in The Book of Lost Tales 2 as “the place of reeds” (155).  
>  **Mellyrn** —Mallorn trees (singular: mallorn) (Sindarin). A tree which reaches massive heights, in appearance somewhat reminiscent of a beech tree. The malinornë has a trunk with smooth, silver bark; its leaves are in summer pale green above and silver below; in the autumn the leaves turn to pale gold rather than falling. The leaves instead fall in spring when the tree flowers; the flowers are golden blossoms that cluster like a cherry tree’s.  
>  **Rodyn** —Valar (singular: Rodon) (Sindarin): a common Sindarin name for the Valar


End file.
